


The Night Will Reign

by squirenonny



Series: Odium's Champion [1]
Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, M/M, WoR spoilers, ambiguous romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-03-30 10:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3933637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So the night will reign, for the choice of honor is life…” (WoR, Interlude I-14)</p>
<p>First chapter written for CFWSF 2014, second for CFSWF 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Odium's Champion

**Author's Note:**

> Edited 7/22/15: This is no longer a collection of loosely related drabbles, but an actual coherent fic. As such I've removed the old chapter 2 (alternate ending). You can find it over at ["The Night Will Reign: Releaser](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4403732).

Nothing changes much in the immediate aftermath of Sadeas’s death. Odium is still gathering his strength, and the Radiants are trying to contain the damage of the Everstorm and Parshmen transformations. Dalinar mentions the stirrings of a plan, gleaned from a conversation with the Almighty. A champion, to force Odium to choose one of his own. A duel between mortals, to spare the world.

But with so much else to do, the idea of champions gets pushed to the side.

Adolin and Kaladin are on the front lines together almost non-stop. (Adolin might not be a Radiant, but he’s still an amazing duelist, and a full Shardbearer.) By the time Kaladin is officially chosen as Honor’s champion, he and Adolin are close friends.

That’s when Odium sees his chance.

Odium sneaks his way into Adolin’s mind, fueling his jealousy of the Radiants around him, his frustration over watching, helpless, as thousands die, his guilt and shame over killing Sadeas—he still hasn’t told anyone, and it eats at him.

The transformation is slow, but those closest to Adolin—Kaladin, Renarin, and Shallan—notice. None of them wants to admit what they’re thinking, because if Adolin really is Odium’s champion, then he has to die.

Odium turns Adolin against Kaladin, making every battle into a competition, every comment into an insult. No matter what Kaladin tries, Adolin reacts with defensiveness, bitterness, and distrust. He accuses Kaladin of trying to steal Shallan, of corrupting Renarin with all that “Bridge Four” nonsense, of spreading lies that make Dalinar trust and respect Kaladin over his own son.

And the worst part is that it’s not Odium-wearing-Adolin’s-face. It’s Adolin. Overstressed and terrified of losing everyone and everything he’s ever cared about. Stripped of inhibitions and perhaps nudged along by Odium—but Adolin nonetheless. Just as Syl influences Kaladin but doesn’t make him not himself, Odium influences Adolin without erasing him.

As the tension builds, Adolin and Kaladin stay as far apart as possible. They’re never together at Urithiru for more than a few hours, and as often as possible Dalinar has Kaladin on the far side of Roshar. It only delays the inevitable.

Odium, through Adolin, lays down a challenge. A duel, one-on-one, to “end it all.”

There’s no denying it now. Adolin is Odium’s champion. Kaladin must kill him, or Roshar is lost.

The battle is intense, pitting two of Roshar’s greatest fighters against each other. Kaladin hates Odium for doing this, for making him kill one of his best friends. He’s angry and hurting, but he fights anyway, because surrendering means letting Odium win. It means failing, again, to protect the people counting on him.

He hates himself most of all, because he should have seen this coming. He should have stopped it.

Syl doesn’t like it. She doesn’t want to kill Adolin. She doesn’t want Kaladin to go through with the duel.

And, to be honest, Kaladin doesn’t want to, either. But as Honor’s champion, he doesn’t have a choice. He can’t turn his back, and he can’t afford to lose.

So he fights.

And he wins.

As Adolin dies, Syl screams. And Odium laughs.

Because Adolin was never his champion.

Kaladin was.

Kaladin, who stands for Honor yet struggles with Hate. Whose hatred for Amaram, for Elhokar, for all lighteyes, has led him astray time and time again.

Kaladin, who the Stormfather knew would kill Syl one day. He tried to protect her when Kaladin started down Odium’s path, tried to keep her from returning to Kaladin, but _she wouldn’t listen_.

And now she’s dead.

Because Honor doesn’t kill innocents.

Honor doesn’t protect only those it’s convenient to protect.

_The choice of Honor is life_.

And Kaladin chose death. He chose Odium.

_So the night will reign_.


	2. Entombed

Adolin doesn’t know how he survives.

He remembers Odium, recognizable now as a whisper in his dreams, a knife in his ribs, a storm in his chest. Adolin yelled, and provoked, and challenged Kaladin to a duel. Not Odium. _Adolin_. They believed Adolin to be Odium’s champion. Adolin himself half believes it, except for what followed. A fight. Kaladin’s face like a stormwall, his Spear lightning made solid. Adolin fought to kill, but he lost. Kaladin killed him.

And then Adolin wakes up.

He wakes to Renarin’s face, lined with exhaustion, taut with fear, streaked with tears. A full half of Bridge Four stands at Renarin’s shoulder, and not out of concern for Adolin. They pull Renarin away as soon as they see Adolin is awake.

Adolin wonders if they’ve realized, yet. That Kaladin is Odium’s champion.

The thought carves a chasm through Adolin, too deep for words, too angry for tears. He rolls over and glares at the wall while Renarin runs to find their father.

* * *

“He let you live.”

Adolin knows this even before Shallan speaks. It’s days later, and Renarin has finished healing him—finished breathing life back into Shardblade-deadened legs, finished mending broken ribs and torn muscles and fractured skull. Adolin’s Plate lies scattered across the Shattered Plains, reduced to dust before Kaladin finished his beating.

Why the Plains, Adolin wonders? Was it his choice, or Odium’s?

Idle thoughts. Where they battled matters less than that they did. And that Kaladin let him live. A Radiant against an unconscious opponent—and Kaladin too experienced with the spear and the scalpel both to misjudge the severity of Adolin’s wounds.

He wanted Adolin to live.

_Odium_ wanted Adolin to live.

He doesn’t say it aloud. He doesn’t say much at all, anymore. The others watch him for signs of Odium’s influence, though none really expect to find it. Adolin is a steel blade, discarded now that Odium has won a Shard. He was left to suffer, not to be used.

Adolin knows that, and though the others suspect it, they have seen too much now of Odium’s schemes to trust again so easily.

(And Adolin tells himself it’s _only_ Odium’s schemes that make his family look at him like a cornered whitespine. Not Adolin’s own hand in Kaladin’s fall.)

After the first time, the first narrowed eyes and calculating frowns, Adolin stops offering his opinion.

But he listens, and he learns that they recovered something else from the Shattered Plains.

* * *

They keep her deep in the stone. That strikes Adolin as wrong. She doesn’t belong underground, but under open skies. She’s never done well behind bars.

(That last, he knows, is not about _her_ , but it’s easier to think of her suffering than _his_.)

Bridge Four guards her, and they let Adolin pass only reluctantly. Is that hope that holds their spears so tall? Or grief? Is this a shrine to the captain they haven’t yet given up on, or his grave?

She rests on a blue cushion—cobalt blue like his uniform, fringed in the color of his eyes full of Stormlight—on a stone pedestal. The room holds nothing else. Just a Blade, dead, but without a gem on the pommel. No one would dare bond this Blade.

_Sylphrena. Her name is Sylphrena._

Adolin touches her lightly, reverently. She feels no different than his own Blade, cold and hard. Perhaps it’s his imagination, but almost he can hear someone sobbing in the back of his mind.

She is dead, but still, it’s wrong to entomb her here beneath the stone.

They won’t let her leave, though. Not Bridge Four, not Dalinar, not anyone.

So Adolin joins her in her prison. Day after day he sits with her, ignoring the bridgemen’s whispers, his family’s worried visits. Adolin understands something of Sylphrena, something no one else does. Odium has stolen both their hearts.

* * *

They go together to find him. Adolin and Sylphrena. A broken man and the Blade that cries inside his head. He cannot— _will_ not—bind her, and so he cannot dismiss her.

He doesn’t mind.

Blue eyes, dark brown beneath Stormlight, haunt his dreams. Adolin wonders if he felt this way, coming to face Adolin’s challenge. Hollowed out, with only a flame of anger to keep him moving.

He saw it in those Stormlit eyes, that anger. Anger at Odium for taking Adolin. Anger at Adolin for losing himself. Anger that made him kill when he should have protected.

Adolin burns with it. With fury at Odium, for taking Kaladin away. Fury at Kaladin, for killing Sylphrena. For trying to kill Adolin.

For failing.

They will bring Kaladin back, Adolin and Sylphrena. They will bring him back alive. Alive, and free of Odium’s power. Kaladin couldn’t do it, but Adolin will be better than that. Just this once, Adolin will be the hero Kaladin couldn’t be.

He wishes he didn’t know it for a lie.


End file.
